


Negative Reinforcement

by Ladytalon



Series: The Doctors Light [3]
Category: DCU, Justice League of America, The Flash (Comic)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-12
Updated: 2011-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-14 16:58:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/151470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladytalon/pseuds/Ladytalon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Earth-14's Justice League is having a holiday party - Dr. Light and Captain Cold feel that it's their civic duty to crash it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Negative Reinforcement

He first got the idea when Kimiyo mentioned the party and then forbade him from coming, all in the same breath.

“Things would be a lot easier if you just told them,” Arthur said. “How much longer do you think they’ll keep from noticing?”

“Noticing what, exactly?” Kimiyo finished brushing her hair and turned towards him, arching her eyebrows.

“That you can’t keep your hands off me. How do you say ‘human catnip’ in Japanese?” He ducked as the hairbrush came sailing towards his head. “Me _ow_. Maybe I’ll stop by to say hello.”

Kim gave him her second-best glare (her best glare was usually reserved for the times he was being arrested). “Do that and I’ll never sleep with you again.”

He rounded his eyes in mock-alarm. “What, never?”

“Never. _Ever_.”

Arthur put his arms behind his head, making a show of his lack of concern. “I love you enough that, if we never had sex again, it wouldn’t bother me.”

She hesitated for a moment, and then narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re such a liar.”

“I know, right?”

“Besides,” she continued, “Sue Dibny would probably hire the entire League of Assassins to come after you if you stepped foot in there.”

“She can’t still be mad about that.”

“You slept with her _husband_ , Arthur; she’s still mad about that.”

“No, I’m telling you _she can’t still be mad_ because they invited me over - what, three years ago? – and she didn’t seem very angry to me.”

“If you try to tell me that Ralph and Sue Dibny invited you over for a threesome, I’m leaving.”

“Then I won’t say a word.”

“Give my brush back to me,” Kimiyo demanded.

“Come and get it, Princess.”

The idea was swiftly forgotten during the foolishness that followed, but it was remembered a week later when she called to remind him that she was going to the League’s holiday party and he was persona non grata. In his opinion, that was a bit like waving a red flag in Pamplona and then telling the bulls to mind their own business.

He teleported to Central City to see Gambi, and appeared in Captain Cold’s living room thirty minutes later. “Lenny, we’re going to a party,” Arthur announced. “You have a suit, don’t you?”

“You don’t start knockin,’ I’ll freeze you to the goddamned floor,” Len warned, popping open a beer and turning his attention back to the hockey game on television.

Arthur picked his way through the piles of…whatever it was… and ransacked the bedroom closet, wondering when his friend had gotten so messy. It was probably just a byproduct of his own relationship with Kimiyo; Arthur was forced to actually pay attention to his own surroundings and keep them reasonably clean so that she’d stick around, so now he noticed when he was somewhere that could double as a pig sty. “How long has it been since you had a date?” he yelled, pulling a coat from the closet and looking at it critically.

“Last night,” Lenny yelled back over the instant replay of Metropolis scoring a goal.

“How long has it been since you didn’t _pay_ for a date?” Arthur shoved the coat back into the closet and was contemplating yanking everything out onto the floor (Lenny would probably never even notice) when he spied a dark grey suit jacket that didn’t look _too_ bad. “Come on, let’s go,” he said, walking back in the living room and holding the jacket up. “Do you have pants that go with this?”

“I’m watchin’ the game, Light.”

“The League is having a holiday party, and it is our civic duty to crash it.”

Len’s armchair creaked as he leaned forward slightly. “The League, huh?”

“Meet me at Gambi’s in ten,” Arthur advised, teleporting back to the tailor’s fitting room. “Paul? Snart’s going to need a necktie.”

Gambi nodded absentmindedly, passing him a black dress shirt and a pair of cufflinks before going back to finishing the alterations he’d made to the jacket. “It’s been awhile since I’ve made anything for you, so I added heat-resistant lining to this just in case. If you need to power up, the suit won’t catch on fire.” The tailor resettled the measuring tape around his neck and smiled. “It’s also water resistant in the event that Ms. Hoshi throws her drink in your face. Would you like the white tie or the black?”

Arthur favored him with a glare as he buttoned up the shirt. “Black.”

He examined himself in one of the full-length mirrors as Lenny arrived and Gambi began sighing over the Rogue’s outfit and offering the loan of something better. No doubt the League expected him to own something along the lines of a brown suit with mustard yellow pinstripes, so Arthur fully intended to lay an illusion over one of the other attendees and appropriate the man’s invitation before accusing his victim of being Doctor Light.

With any luck, he’d be able to do it to Carter Hall.

 

_ _ _ _ _ _ 

 

“I don’t see why you can’t just zap us in there,” Lenny growled in his ear as they stood in the snow outside the huge manor, waiting for someone to approach the doormen. “You sure have a blast doing it everywhere _else_ you go.”

“There's bound to be a security detail checking the number of attendees against the number of invitations collected at the door,” Arthur said, his eyes narrowing as he caught sight of an approaching couple; Black Canary and Green Arrow. She’d raise the alarm fairly quickly – not to mention loudly – so he’d only have a few minutes at best, but it would be worth it. His jaw _still_ hurt from where she’d kicked him in the face last month and as for Oliver Queen…well, Arthur didn’t particularly like him. “They’ll do; let’s go.”

Lenny stared at the approaching couple. "Isn't that Black Canary?"

"Yes, it is."

"I've heard stories about that broad…"

Arthur sighed. "They're all true. She won't scream with the guards that close; like I always say, it's time to go hard or go home."

"What, like that time we were on the Squad together and you took off in the middle of that fight in Kandaq?"

"Precisely. I was going home."

Arthur warped the light around the irritating pair, keeping his eyes on them until he was certain he could maintain the illusions, and they moved in to confiscate the invitations. Len plucked the parchment square from Canary’s fingers, and Arthur slipped the other from Queen’s pocket while replacing it with a tiny hologram generator that would power the illusory disguise for at least five more minutes.

“What the…?” Canary bent down to scan the ground for the invitation, thinking that she’d somehow dropped it, and Arthur allowed the screen of invisibility to dissipate.

“Can you believe it?” he said loudly as he handed the doormen the stolen invitations. “Doctor Light and Captain Cold are trying to sneak into the party!” Dinah’s head snapped up and her mouth dropped open, eyes widening in outrage as she recognized his voice and his goatee. He waggled his fingers at her as a group of four bouncers appeared to deal with the ‘party crashers.’ “Nice suit, by the way.”

Cold laughed as they passed through the arched doorway and were escorted down a hall decorated with garlands and the occasional evergreen tree. “That was too easy.”

Of course it was. “It won’t last, so we’d better enjoy what time we have until we’re kicked out,” Arthur said, accepting a glass of champagne from a passing waiter. “If you see anyone with green skin, head in the opposite direction.”

“Man, look at _those_. Breath check,” Lenny declared.

Arthur dutifully leaned in. “Garlic.”

“Damn. Well, you only live once.” Len moved off in the general direction of Vixen and a beautiful redhead in a wheelchair, and he scanned the room for Kimiyo. Several ‘superheroes’ were making fools of themselves by dancing to a particularly obnoxious remake of a carol. His main nemesis Power Girl was pretending she wasn’t trying to draw attention to her bosom by placing a sprig of mistletoe just beneath her neck, Guy Gardner was doing something wholly inappropriate to his long-suffering girlfriend in the shadows, and…there she was.

Kimiyo looked more beautiful than ever in a flowing red dress that accentuated her curves and made her seem taller than her height of 5’3”. The song changed and the gyrations mercifully stopped in favor of something more recognizable as dancing as he approached, sliding into the vacant chair beside her. "Would you like to dance?"

Her boredom was nearly palpable as she stared off into space. "No, thank you."

"Are you sure?" Arthur asked, watching the dawning recognition on her face before she whipped around in her seat to look at him. "You look as if you'd like to."

Her resemblance to a short, fire-breathing dragon had never been so apparent. " _You_ ," Kim breathed.

"Me, me, _me_ ," Arthur agreed, straightening his tie and draping his arm over the back of her chair. "I expect you'll want to haul me off to the nearest broom closet and ravish me senseless."

"I don't have to do anything for you to be senseless," she snapped at him. "I thought I made it clear that I didn’t want you here."

He opened his mouth to defend his senses when he caught sight of Kara headed their way with her head down and her nostrils flared. "Don't you just love this song? Let's dance," he said hurriedly, pulling her onto the parquet floor and into his arms.

"Don't step on my dress," she said automatically.

“You look beautiful,” Arthur told her honestly, trying to steer her towards the closest sprig of mistletoe.

Kim looked away, spots of color appearing on her cheeks. “ _You_ look uninvited.”

“You haven’t mentioned how uninvitedly handsome you think I look.”

“Uninvitedly isn’t a word,” she informed him. “And as for you being that other thing, I hadn’t noticed.”

They were starting to get noticed, and Arthur spun her closer. “Yes, you have. You’re salivating and it’s quite unseemly, not to mention the fact that it makes me feel as if I’m a prime cut of beef at the supermarket.”

Kimiyo sighed, and he could tell she was trying not to smile by the way she pursed her lips. “Beef? You’re closer to being a ham.”

The mistletoe was nearly overhead, and Arthur glanced around to see Power Girl bearing down on them. “Did I mention you were beautiful? Just like an extremely prickly cactus in bloom...all you need is a vulture to – look, there's one now.”

“ _Light!_ ” Kara yelled, making everyone around them stop to look. “What do you think you’re doing here?”

Arthur tightened his grip on Kimiyo, swung her directly beneath the mistletoe, and kissed her with as much showmanship as he could muster. Her arms twined around his neck and he felt a glow of satisfaction that he’d managed to crash a League party and kiss one of their members in front of everyone, but the feeling didn’t last long because as soon as he came up for air Arthur noticed the expressions on the faces surrounding them. No one except for Power Girl seemed offended, or outraged, or… okay, there _were_ a few disgusted expressions floating around.

They looked curious, amused and bored, which could only mean one thing: Kimiyo had played him like a fiddle.

He looked down at her, she looked up at him, and it was then that Arthur realized that she was pure evil. “I knew I could count on you,” Kim said, patting his chest and heading off towards the buffet table.

A shadow fell across him, and Arthur sighed as the Man of Steel threw a fatherly arm across his shoulders. “So, Arthur. What are your intentions towards our Kim?”

If it was the last thing he ever did, he was going to get her for this.


End file.
